Wisdom Quotations

Wisdom: What quotations are revered for. All quotations in this category contain timeless bits of wisdom and many are quite provacative

Showing 73 through 108 of 376 quotations in this category.

"There are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience."

-Roger Bacon

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."

-George Bernard Shaw

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

-H. L. Mencken

"I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me."

-George Bernard Shaw

"Never explain. Your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."

-Elbert Hubbard

"I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect."

-Edward Gibbon

"There was never an angry man that thought his anger unjust."

-St. Francis De Sales

"Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge."

-Cicero

"When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

-Jonathan Swift

"Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want."

-Clive Barnes

"When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it."

-Anatole France

"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes."

-Winston Churchill

"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it."

-Andrew Carnegie

"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection."

-Henri Poincare

"The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is."

-George Bernard Shaw

"We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions."

-Isaac Bashevis Singer

"When you're arguing with a fool, make sure he isn't doing the same thing."

-unknown

"As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected."

-Charles Darwin

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism."

-Winston Churchill

"There are two kinds of truth, small truth and great truth. You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth."

-Niels Bohr

"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false."

-Paul Johnson

"Everything happens for a reason; If you can't find a reason for something, there's a reason for that."

-Chris Levi

"The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its caution. It thus reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. In the language of morality: Humility."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind--that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking."

-Henry Louis Mencken

"Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt."

-Graham Greene

"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."

-Albert Einstein

"Some people speak from experience; others, from experience, don't speak."

-unknown

"It's important to remember that just because there are crooks, zealots and morons supporting a position, it does not automatically follow that the position is wrong."

-Jan D. Wolter

"Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few."

-Benjamin Franklin

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

-Eric Hoffer

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."

-Eric Hoffer

"True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not there is neither Truth nor Falsehood."

-Thomas Hobbes

"Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations."

-Edward de Bono

"Americans of good faith across the political spectrum know that suppression and intimidation of political diversity is a dangerous trend. Ideas must be challenged in the course of free and open discussion for democracy to survive."

-Richard Bey

"A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."

-Proverbs 15:1

"If someone offers you a gift, and you decline to accept it, the other person still owns that gift. The same is true of insults and verbal attacks."

-Steve Pavlina